Applicants are invited to apply for postdoc fellowship in robotics at Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia. All students regardless of citizenship are eligible to apply. Applications will be accepted at any time until the position is filled.

This position is funded by the EU WALK-MAN project (http://walk-man.eu), whose goal is the development of a humanoid robot equipped with human levels of dexterous and powerful manipulation skills, robust balanced locomotion and physical sturdiness. In addition, the robot will have the sufficient cognitive ability to operate autonomously or through remote operation with minimal supervision. To improve grasp stability and tolerance to uncertainties, we aim to advance the state-of-the-art methods in visual servoing. The latter is a well-known technique in robotics, but it is made challenging in this context because the visual appearance of the hand can significantly change in shape and undergo partial occlusions during manipulation.

The project will therefore focus on building 3D model representations of the environment and the robot manipulator based on exteroceptive vision data during task execution. We are looking for a highly motivated researcher with strong enthusiasm to work with robotic platforms and skills to investigate and implement algorithms exploiting visual feedback to enhance object manipulation. The project will be carried out on the iCub platform, a full-fledged humanoid endowed with moving cameras and articulated hands sporting tactile sensors.

Tasks will be:
- To develop and implement methods for object and manipulator tracking for visual servoing in single and stereo-camera real-time video streams;
- Monitor, evaluate and extend state-of-the-art methods and verify their applicability;
- Test and verify functionality under real world conditions on the iCub and the Walk-man robots.

- Interested applicants should submit their CV and a list of publications to the following email address: with at least the names of 2 referees.
- The official call is available here: http://goo.gl/lYzxtO.